Rep. King defends 'essential' Islam hearing

Rep. Peter King hit back Tuesday at critics blasting his committee’s scheduled hearing on the “radicalization” of American Muslims.

“These hearings are absolutely essential,” the New York Republican said Tuesday morning on MSNBC. “I am facing reality – my critics are not.”

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King, who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security has set a hearing for Thursday morning to examine the “extent of radicalization” among Muslims in the United States.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim to be elected to Congress is set to testify, as is Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs a subcommittee that oversees Justice Department spending. Two relatives of young Muslim men who joined terrorist groups will testify, as will a Muslim man from Arizona who believes his community needs to do more to combat radicalization from within. Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca, who has supported the Council on American Islamic Relations and other Muslim groups, will also testify.

King is making “disturbing use of a congressional hearing,” Ellison said Monday night on MSNBC. “There’s awesome power associated with being chairman of a committee, and able to investigate and do oversight and to use it to essentially go after a religious minority group, I think it’s a scary proposition,” he said.

Though accused by CAIR, rights groups and writers, including the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, of violating civil liberties with what’s planned to be a series of hearings, King insisted Tuesday that he is upholding American values by examining the issue. “I believe in a democracy. The way you confront problems is to put the truth on the table, have free and open debate,” he said. “I would say the hysteria, the talk has all been put out by my opponents.”

“The majority of Muslims are outstanding Americans,” King said, “but Al Qaeda is recruiting from within the Muslim-American community” and the community’s leaders aren’t trying to stop it. The hearings, he said, will be the first step toward getting Muslims to do more self-policing when they see suspicious behavior around them.